Well , i use Blender for very long time.
I can only say, it's really great.
I use it for modeling, UV Mapping , rigging with weight paint and animations.

The only problem : it need you to learn the interface and the panels : i recognize , the panels are confusing some times.

You can use it without any key shortcut if you want , and you have a context menu in 3D window if you press space.

There are lot of shortcuts : did you know you can have a multitool like in Silo , just by pressing a button , shift plus another button ?



You can add rotation tool if you want.

That's the sort of little things that make you win lot of time in modeling.

Well, if you add the top notch script of Ventilator to export animated characters, that's the tool